


A Dustland Fairytale

by karrenia_rune



Category: Defiance (TV)
Genre: Father-Daughter Relationship, Gen, Pre-Series, Yuletide New Year's Resolutions Challenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-07
Updated: 2015-01-07
Packaged: 2018-03-06 13:42:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,763
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3136538
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/karrenia_rune/pseuds/karrenia_rune
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>These are the days, these are the moments, so let's make the most of our lives. Pretty much what it says on the tin; a look at the pre-series relationship<br/>between Jousha Nolan and Irisa.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Dustland Fairytale

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fearlessfan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fearlessfan/gifts).



Disclaimer: Defiance belongs to Syfy Channel and its respective producers and creators. It is not mine.  
Note: the title comes from the Killers' song by the same, the snippets of songs by Heart and the Indigo Girls.

 

"A Dustland Fairytale" by Karrenia

It’s hot and its bumpy inside the roller and her father sings along with tunes on the radio that have been out-of-date for some time now, and every none and again it will be just the two of them singing as the roller traverses the streets and plains of a country that’s seen better days. She doesn’t mind. In fact, it’s soothing in its way, and they’ve had precious little of that in the past few months. 

Her father fought in the Pale war and she knows that he’s seen and done things that nobody who likes to be able to sleep at night should have had to go through. 

She also knew that he’ll avoid talking about that part of his past, except the part where he’d saved her life. She doesn’t love him because of that, but it is there nonetheless.

It’ has become part of their unspoken understanding, that while each of them has areas of potentially conversational minefields it doesn’t matter, because they are a family, and family loves unconditionally.  
In fact, in a weird way, Irisa actually prefers that her father taught her things like how to sew up patches in fraying clothing, stitch up cuts and wounds, with equal precision. 

The zig-zag red, white and yellow poncho that Irisa had torn last week when she’d been looking for firewood had been badly in need of mending and so she sat on a nearby boulder while Nolan saw to fixing the axle that had been jostled loose

As she worked she sang in rhythm with the pulled and darted the needle and thread in and out, repairing the damage, looking up at the stars. Tonight was a good night see them, clear and bright the velvety dome of the sky spread before like a blanket.

‘Irisa sang: “What a day you had today. It took your smile away. Take me out under the sky to count diamonds all through the night. Out under the sky. Let’s run away. “

“Nolan came back around from the rear side of the roller but did not interrupt as she completed the brief snatch of melody; it was a pretty but a little bittersweet tune and one that he had never heard before which made him wonder where she had learned it. Probably at the last city that they had stopped it; however the provenance of the song did not matter to him because she momentarily took his gaze off of Irisa and looked up at the dome of the sky. It was like a velvety black blanket sprinkled with diamonds.

“That was nice,” he said.

“Nolan, how long have you been standing there,” Irisa said.

“Long enough,” he replied, adding, “Do you want to camp out tonight before heading out again?”

“I’d like that.” Did you get that axle fixed?”

“Yeah, it should hold for now."

“Where are we going?”

“I was thinking San Fran, but I haven’t decided yet. I will tell you when I do, I promise.”

Irisa snorted but did not press the point. However, it only irks her a little bit and she’s taken to irritating right back because she’s never really had the luxury of putting down deep roots. But that’s okay, and now that she’s older and more experienced she’s even learned that she calls him out on some of the easier bullshit.

Together they stacked the firewood that she had gathered and stacked in a roughly pyramid-shaped and lit with the flint and steel that each carried in their pockets, cooking a meal and then going back to the roller to get their sleeping backs. Nolan also brought back a thermos of coffee, keeping black but adding cream and sugar to his. 

“I wish I was a nomad traveling these dark and dusty highways,” Iris sang, her voice husky yet not unpleasant every so often hovering just on the edge of dissonance without ever going over. ‘Everywhere I turn, oh, the beauty, and the dirt of everyday living kept on reflecting back on me.’." Shortly after dinner and the coffee Nolan retired to his bedroll, lay down on his back and in short order was sound asleep. His snoring providing a counterpoint to the insects whirring around their campsite.

Irisa did not go to bed right away but stayed awake with her knees pulled up to her chest, but soon her own fatigue got the best of her and she fell asleep as well.  
***  
He taught her how to properly clean, care for and load the guns that he prefers to use. She’s smaller and quicker and she prefers her knives to the noisy business of guns. 

Nolan prefers guns and if that works for him. Sometimes she thinks that whenever the situation calls for it, she can feel his eyes on her as she darts, weaves. There’s a certain deadly beauty to knife work, but only when it’s necessary, and more than a means of survival.

He had also taught her that as terrible as she had once the world had seemed to her, it’s the world as is and together their lives are better. He was grateful ever so grateful that fate or coincidence or what have you had brought them together. 

“Irisa, girl, these are the moments, these are the times we’ve been given; we’ve got to make the most of the lives we have.”

The other night she woke up in the middle of the night, scared that the world was too much for her, with the gnawing feeling in the pit of her stomach that was being haunted by the idea that she was becoming a stranger in her own skin. 

Aloud she sang “Now I’m running to the edge of the earth, and I’m swimming to the edge of the sea. Now I’m laughing, and no matter what we’ll always have each other.”

“That’s my girl,” Nolan murmured, adding, “Irisa, you okay?”

“I’m fine, Nolan. Do not you worry about me. But if everyone might get shot out here it would more than likely be you. You make a much more attractive and easier target.”

“God, I love your back-handed compliments,” he replied. 

“Somebody has to keep you in line. Since nobody else would be willing or foolish enough to take on the job, I guess it has to be me.”

Irisa’s eyes dilate with the dim illumination filtering in from the moonbeams from outside, and she darts inside the rickety, rusty husk of what used to be an Ark, careful to wave her flashlight all around just in case any another roving band of bandits or scavengers were around looking to cause trouble. It was well that she did for a band of scavengers or outlaws riding on some kind of two-wheeled motorized vehicles had appeared claiming that they had a prior claim to the wreck. 

Nolan began to rock back on his heels, adopting the casual nonchalant relaxed posture that signaled, hey, let’s all take it easy here, nobody wants any trouble, but if you want to press the point sure as hell you’re made yourself a mighty mistake, fellas. She knew that pose and Irisa quickly scrambled to a prime vantage point in order to back up whatever play Nolan might have in mind.

The leader a tall, scruffy looking man with a scar marring his features in a diagonal arc down the left side of his face apparently could not take the implied hint, for instead he drew a gun and with a wave of his hand signaled the rest of his band to do likewise. 

“I don’t know how you are, Mister, but this here is our property and if you want to go on continue to breathe you best take yourself and your brat elsewhere.”

“Look, you can insult me, but leave her out of this,” replied Nolan.

“All the same to me, the leader of the brigands replied. “But you’ve been warned.

“Here’s the thing,” Nolan countered. “What say we leave all this threatening posturing and go have a look at whatever’s in there, and then if it’s of any value we can split if fifty-fifty. What do you say?”

“I don’t bargain with scum,” the leader replied.

Irisa sniffed, “Hmph, from where I’m standing, he has some nerve to be calling us scum, He smells worse than we do and the rest of his goons are a damn sight worse off.”

Nolan manfully attempted not to laugh at that, instead of covering the laughter with a cough. “Well,” Nolan turned back to address the brigand leader once more.

He looked uncertain if backing down and agreeing to this new wrinkle would somehow bring him down a peg or two in the regard of his men, but then scratching an itch in his scalp he at last said. “Very well, but don’t try anything.”

“Agreed,” Nolan replied. “Let’s go.”

The place reminded Nolan of being inside the rib-cage of some fantastic prehistoric beast even though these ships had been built, outfitted and occupied by people whose design aesthetics were created by things that were very different than anything that had roamed around earth millions of years ago; all the same he could not shake off the feeling.

He’d been in Arks before and so had Irisa so he knew what to expect, the stuff wasn’t dangerous it just had to be handled with care. 

Along the way, right before they reached one of the inner chambers he causally signaled to Irisa to activate one of the still active counter-intruder mechanisms and trapped the brigands and their leader inside a stasis force-field.

“Let’s get out of here.”

“What about our cut?”? Irisa sputtered as she ran out the way they had come.

“They still owe us. Yeah, but I think I can exchange our cut for the priceless look on their faces.”

Once they were outside in the fresh air once more, and out of ear-shot of those inside the crashed ship, Irisa regarded her father and hugged him around his waist, asking, “Should we just leave them there?”

“It’ll wear off, eventually, but I think it would better for us if we weren’t here when it does,” Nolan replied, hugging her back, tousling her mop of reddish hair. That was fun,”

Letting go, Irisa stepped back, snorting, “Speak for yourself.”


End file.
